Amazon's hopes of delivering shipments to customers via drones got a little more real Thursday as federal regulators granted the company approval to test its unmanned aircraft.

The Federal Aviation Administration gave Amazon's drones what's called an experimental airworthiness certificate, which lets the company fly its aircraft for research, testing and crew training purposes. Amazon must follow a handful of rules laid out by the FAA: It must keep flights at 400 feet or below, only fly in daylight, and pilots must hold at least a private pilot's certificate, among other stipulations. The company also has to report a wealth of data about its drone flights to the agency every month.

The FAA's Thursday decision comes after Amazon petitioned the agency last July to let it test its drones. In February, the FAA proposed new commercial drone rules that would make it significantly easier to legally operate a drone for money in the U.S., an activity that currently requires case-by-case approval from the agency. However, the plan would require drone pilots to fly their aircraft with "unaided vision" and avoid flying over people, rules that would seem to preclude Amazon's drone delivery concept.

The FAA is expected to vote on those new rules later this year.

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/03/19/amazon-drone-faa/feed/0Image (1) 131202125905-amazon-drone-620xa2.jpg for post 342893vernekopyWhere can Amazon legally fly its drones?http://fortune.com/2015/02/18/amazon-drones-legal-countries/
http://fortune.com/2015/02/18/amazon-drones-legal-countries/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 17:02:12 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=995349]]>The Federal Aviation Administration’s proposed drone rules clip the wings of Amazon’s Prime Air delivery service in the United States, but the online retailer could be eyeing other countries for testing to keep momentum going.

Amazon, in its sole statement regarding the FAA proposal, said it remains “prepared to deploy [Prime Air] where we have the regulatory support we need.” Translation: We’re willing to move our operations elsewhere.

It’s not the first time the company AMZN has hinted at the prospect. “Our continuing innovation through outdoor testing in the United States and, more generally, the competitiveness of the American small UAS [Unmanned Aircraft Systems] industry, can no longer afford to wait,” said Paul Misener, Amazon vice president for global policy, in a note to the FAA written on Dec. 7, 2014. “Amazon is increasingly concerned that, unless substantial progress is quickly made in opening up the skies in the United States, the nation is at risk of losing its position as the center of innovation for the UAS technological revolution, along with the key jobs and economic benefits that come as a result. … Without approval of our testing in the United States, we will be forced to continue expanding our Prime Air R&D footprint abroad.”

Amazon already has a research and development facility in Cambridge, England, where it has been focusing on Prime Air. Less than five hours away, an independent facility in Wales specializes in outdoor drone testing, with permission from the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority to test limited long-range trials.

While drone deliveries are still illegal in the U.K., the country does seem more open to the idea. Should that not work out, though, there are several other countries whose drone policies are more relaxed policies than the U.S.

Australia, for example, has warmly welcomed other companies wishing to test drone delivery. Google GOOG recently ran trials in Queensland, the third-most populous state in the country, for its Project Wing autonomous drone delivery service.

And, in Germany, DHL launched an experimental drone delivery service called “parcelcopter” in December 2013, carrying small parcels to the small island of Juist (population 2,000).

“Our DHL parcelcopter 2.0 is already one of the safest and most reliable flight systems in its class that meets the requirements needed to fulfill such a mission,” said J?rgen Gerdes, CEO of Deutsche Post DHL’s Post-eCommerce-Parcel Division, in a statement made at the time of the launch.

Canada, meanwhile, has the same line-of-sight requirements the FAA proposed, but it doesn’t require the operators to be certified as long as the UAS is under 55 lbs.

And while Amazon isn’t likely to greatly expand its footprint in China merely to focus on drones, the country has shown a willingness to embrace the technology. Earlier this month, Alibaba’s Taobao division announced on its blog that it had launched a three-day trial, using drones to deliver a specific type of tea to 450 customers within an hour of its distribution centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

It’s important to note that none of these countries has signed off on widespread drone deliveries. And the FAA has been clear that its recent proposals are not final.

Still, it does seem that a face-off between the agency and Amazon has been brewing for some time.

“I fear the FAA may be questioning the fundamental benefits of keeping UAS technology innovation in the United States,” said Misener in his December note. “Simply put, Prime Air has great potential to enhance the services we already provide to millions of our customers by providing rapid parcel delivery that will also increase the overall safety and efficiency of the transportation system. … Without the ability to test outdoors in the Unites States soon, we will have no choice but to divert even more of our UAS research and development resources abroad.”

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/02/18/amazon-drones-legal-countries/feed/0Amazone Prime Air dronesoccerrogueWith new rules, the FAA and drone industry make uphttp://fortune.com/2015/02/18/faa-drone-rules-proposal/
http://fortune.com/2015/02/18/faa-drone-rules-proposal/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 16:35:22 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=995344]]>Sunday's release of a set of proposed rules governing the use unmanned aerial systems--better known as drones--in U.S. airspace didn't hold very many surprises. But according to industry sources, the lack of surprises was the most pleasantly surprising aspect of the Federal Aviation Administration's proposal.

A first pass at the 195-page document shows an FAA that is far more in tune with industry needs than many imagined, providing a kind of "healing moment," as one source puts it, for an industry and a regulatory overseer whose relations have long been strained. Many drone industry insiders have variously regarded the FAA as dawdling, too risk-averse, and overly burdensome. The agency has struggled to produce a set of cohesive regulations regarding drone use--particularly commercial use--as drone technology has exploded over the past several years.

But the proposal shows that the FAA has worked hard to avoid overly-onerous regulations. It’s a promising sign for companies that want to integrate drones into their day-to-day operations and the drone makers eager to supply them with hardware, software, and support.

"I think the FAA has had a tremendously difficult job to do, and I think what they came out with over the weekend was surprising," says Matthew Bieschke, president of the $2.2 billion UAS America Fund, an investment fund designed to facilitate financing of infrastructure related to unmanned aerial systems. "It was less conservative than a lot of people in the industry thought it would be."

That surprise--or relief--is a common sentiment around the nascent industry.

"I would say that what we're seeing is refreshing," says Jesse Kallman, head of business development and regulatory affairs at Airware, a San Francisco-based startup that develops operating systems and other technologies for drones. "We were expecting that even within this already walled-off environment we were going to see a significant amount of additional rules."

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking contains plenty of rules. But most are no more restrictive than the industry was expecting. (In many cases the rules are somewhat more relaxed than many drone advocates feared.) Broadly, the proposed rule stipulates that drones used for commercial operations should weigh less than 55 pounds, fly only during daylight hours in good weather, fly no faster than 100 miles per hour, stay away from airports, and remain within visible line of sight of the operator. While the proposal doesn't distinguish between very small drones and larger models or provide for beyond-line-of-sight operations, it also doesn't burden users with onerous airworthiness or pilot training requirements.

But there are aspects of the notice that the FAA got wrong, says Brendan Schulman, head of the unmanned aircraft systems practice at New York City-based law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel. For instance, the document seems to place drone-related academic research under the umbrella of commercial operations, making drone-enabled research more difficult. The rules prohibit flying at night or at altitudes above 500 feet, which doesn't make sense in rural areas where the airspace (and ground space below) is largely clear. And for the time being the proposed rules sweep aside drone delivery concepts like the one hatched by Amazon.

"The proposal considers drone delivery to be air carriage subject to heightened regulatory standards outside the UAS proposal," Schulman told Fortune in an email. "That’s a legal distinction that made sense in the manned aircraft era but I am not sure why they are holding on to it. It strikes me as a real blow to Amazon and other companies that have been working on drone delivery projects."

Critically, the proposal will not require small drones to comply with the FAA's airworthiness or aircraft certification regulations--that is, users won't have to certify their 10-pound drones by the same process that one certifies a Cessna--and will not require the same training or medical rating required of manned aircraft pilots. Rather, the FAA will create a separate knowledge-based certification process for drone operators that will require regular recertification. These two aspects of the proposal could be the most impactful for companies, as getting their drones into the air won't be nearly as costly or time-consuming.

"People feared that the new process would look like the Section 333 exemption process up to and including the private pilot's license requirement," says Lisa Ellman, counsel and co-chair of the UAS Practice Group at the D.C. office of McKenna Long & Aldridge, referring to the FAA's current means of approving commercial drone applications on a case-by-case basis. "That's a really involved process and it's not easy, it's a several-month process. So this is a huge, wonderful thing, this new UAS operator's certificate. It will be relatively easy to get and will make drones broadly accessible."

While the specifics of FAA’s proposal are encouraging to commercial drone advocates, it's the broad strokes of the document that are perhaps most promising to companies looking to take advantage of drone technology, Ellman says--echoing Bieschke, Kallman, and many others within the industry that have issued press releases, blogged, and publicly opined about the document since it's release Sunday morning. The document shows an FAA that recognizes that drone technology is outpacing policy and was careful to build flexibility into its proposed rules and processes.

Critics say the proposed rules lack a provision providing for beyond-line-of-sight operations (critical for applications like power line or pipeline inspection) and a distinction between hulking 50-pound drone aircraft and small, four-pound quadrotors. But the document leaves the door open to such things in the future. Though the FAA has been careful to stick to its core mission of regulating the national airspace and leave privacy issues to other more appropriate agencies, the White House on Sunday released a memorandum on privacy and transparency that will not only guide government agencies in their use of drones but also create a process for developing and enforcing new privacy norms through the Department of Commerce--a signal that other government agencies are prepared to move forward with drone integration alongside the FAA.

The FAA still remains far from a final set of commercial drone rules. It will accept comments on the proposed rules for the next 60 days and it's expected to take another year to weigh all those comments and process them into a final set of regulations, likely sometime in 2016. But now that companies have a whole lot more clarity on what the FAA and other agencies are thinking they can begin investing in their own concepts of commercial drone operations. For a industry that's been in a holding pattern for the last several years, it's difficult to be anything but upbeat, Ellman says.

"I think this is going to open up lots of investment in the industry, lots more movement in the industry," Ellman says. "Sunday provided a very important moment for all of us because it really gives the industry a sense of certainty, a roadmap for where we're going, and it's all very good news."

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/02/18/faa-drone-rules-proposal/feed/0Product Displays At The CP+ Camera And Imaging ExposoccerrogueSuper Bowl is a ‘no drone zone’http://fortune.com/2015/01/28/faa-no-drones-super-bowl/
http://fortune.com/2015/01/28/faa-no-drones-super-bowl/#commentsWed, 28 Jan 2015 21:24:19 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=965528]]>Tickets for this weekend’s Super Bowl may be hard to come by, but the federal government says that’s no excuse for using a drone to get a bird’s-eye view of the big game.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a warning Wednesday to remind fans of both football and unmanned aircraft that the Super Bowl is “strictly a ‘no drone zone.'” It is illegal to fly unauthorized aircraft, such as a drone, over or near any NFL games, not just Sunday’s championship game, according to the FAA. The same restriction also applies Major League Baseball games, several Nascar events and any college sporting event taking place in a stadium that seats at least 30,000 fans.

Anyone caught breaking this rule could be detained by law enforcement and wind up facing jail time as well as a possible civil penalty for “careless and reckless” operation of an aircraft.

Says the FAA: “Bottom line: If you want to see video of the Big Game, watch it on TV. Leave your drone at home.”

The government’s stern warning for drone enthusiasts near Glendale, Ariz. (where the Super Bowl will be played at University of Phoenix Stadium) comes just a couple of days after an off-duty intelligence agency official crashed a recreational drone -- while drunk, apparently -- on the White House lawn. The crash prompted President Obama to call for stricter regulation of domestic drone use while The Wall Street Journal reported that drone-maker DJII will start disabling its drones’ ability to fly over the Washington, D.C. area.

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/01/28/faa-no-drones-super-bowl/feed/0NFL: Super Bowl XLVIII-Denver Broncos vs Seattle SeahawkshuddlestontomAs FAA stalls on drones, a push for a smaller winhttp://fortune.com/2015/01/12/faa-small-drones/
http://fortune.com/2015/01/12/faa-small-drones/#commentsMon, 12 Jan 2015 17:18:07 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=940089]]>Safely integrating drones into the national airspace is a big job. But with federal regulators poised to miss Congressionally mandated deadlines for producing a regulatory framework allowing the use of unmanned aerial systems--abbreviated UAS but better known as drones--for commercial purposes, an industry group is pushing the Federal Aviation Administration toward a new strategy: start small.

The UAS Fund, a $2.2 billion private-sector investment pool incorporated last year by NEXA Capital Partners in Washington D.C., has filed a formal rule-making proposal with the FAA supplying a proposed regulation governing the use of extremely small drones weighing less than three pounds. The idea? While the FAA remains bogged down in the complexities inherent in making America's airspace safe for drones of all sizes, allow so-called "micro unmanned aircraft"--mUA for short--to begin flying in a commercial capacity in the near term. Doing so is relatively risk-free, UAS Fund representatives say, and would allow the unmanned systems industry to unleash the myriad benefits of drones on U.S. business. It would also set in motion the billions of dollars in economic impact that drones are expected to deliver when they are finally cleared for commercial use.

"Our view is that our micro unmanned aircraft rule is a no-brainer from an economic development perspective because it can be immediately implemented and start unlocking economic benefits today," says UAS Fund president Matthew Bieschke. "Moving away from the burdensome process that's in place right now will allow some of the economic benefits to be realized today, long before the small UAS rule gets worked out."

The "small UAS rule" currently under development by the FAA would apply to all drones weighing 55 pounds or less, regardless of size, application, or type of aircraft. A draft version of these regulations was supposed to be handed down by the end of 2014 and a final set of rules put in place by the end of 2015. But by their own admission, regulators have had a hard time developing a set of regulations that reasonably apply across all sizes and classes of unmanned aircraft.

As a result, the FAA's blanket ban on commercial drone use remains in effect, the only exceptions being a few companies that have managed to secure exemptions from the FAA through a lengthy application process. Last week the FAA granted two more exemptions, one to a precision agriculture company and the other to a real estate firm, bringing the total number of companies allowed to use drones for commercial purposes to 13. (More than 200 applications are pending.) The proposed mUA rule would create a general regulation that would allow anyone to commercially operate drones weighing less than three pounds without securing an application-specific exemption from the FAA.

The proposed rule also reflects the a growing sentiment among drone advocates in and outside the industry that regulating a two-pound, battery-powered quadrotor and a 50-pound, gas-powered behemoth in the same way is not only nonsensical, but quite difficult for the FAA to do in a manner that's not burdensome for both businesses and authorities.

"We don't think starting with a 55-pound rule is the way to go," Bieschke says. "We think the best way to do this is to start with this category first and then build on that. We need to start somewhere. We need to crawl before we walk, and walk before we run."

The mUA rule proposal argues that allowing drones three-pounds and lighter into the airspace first makes sense because according to the FAA's own data, objects of that size pose no threat to manned aviation. The mUA proposal comes complete with a safety study compiled by a third-party engineering firm based largely upon FAA on bird strikes within the general aviation industry. While data concerning actual collisions between manned aircraft and drones is virtually nonexistent, the study concludes that in the last 25 years there have been no injuries or deaths resulting from manned aircraft colliding with small- or medium-sized birds (those weighing less than 3.8 pounds) despite the presence of 10 billion birds in U.S. skies.

Therefore, the study concludes, mUA operated by experienced pilots in accordance with existing drone regulations--which dictate that unmanned aircraft operate below a ceiling of 400 feet and at least five miles away from airports--pose no threat to manned aviation. Nor should they pose an unreasonable threat to persons on the ground. And with safety concerns put to rest, there's no reason to prohibit companies from taking advantage of the valuable data and imagery that even this smallest class of drones can provide.

For the drone industry and companies anxious to integrate drones into their operations, the proposed mUA rule provides something else that could be far more important in the long term: a foot in the door. The proposed mUA rule isn't designed to be a "one-and-done" solution, Bieschke says, but the first step toward creating smart and safe regulations around larger classes of unmanned aircraft. "We personally--the UAS Fund--don't really have a lot to gain from a three-pound rule," he says. "We just want to promote commercialization here, to jump-start the industry and get us moving in the right direction here in the United States rather than sit here and watch all these companies go overseas or to Canada."

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/01/12/faa-small-drones/feed/0Newest Innovations In Consumer Technology On Display At 2015 International CESsoccerrogueU.S. approves more commercial drone use as Congress probes riskshttp://fortune.com/2014/12/10/u-s-approves-more-commercial-drone-use-as-congress-probes-risks/
http://fortune.com/2014/12/10/u-s-approves-more-commercial-drone-use-as-congress-probes-risks/#commentsWed, 10 Dec 2014 21:56:33 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=899657]]>(REUTERS) – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday granted four more companies exemptions to use drones commercially, further opening the airspace to unmanned aircraft even as lawmakers raised questions about the risks.

Trimble Navigation Ltd, VDOS Global LLC, Clayco Inc and Woolpert Inc said in their petitions to the FAA that they would operate drones weighing less than 55 pounds (25 kg) and keep them within view at all times.

The approvals broaden the uses of commercial drones to include aerial surveying, construction site monitoring and oil rig flare stack inspections. Previous FAA exemptions were for aerial photography by seven television and film companies.

The FAA is expected to release a draft rule on drones by the end of December. The latest approvals came as the FAA and other industry officials were questioned by Congress on Wednesday about the safety and benefits of drone use.

The FAA has been under mounting pressure from companies seeking to employ drones to survey crops, inspect remote power lines and pipelines or deliver packages, or other uses.

The U.S. drone industry is expected to generate $13.6 billion in economic activity and create 70,000 jobs in the three years after commercial use restrictions are lifted, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

The FAA bans most commercial drone flights, but is required by Congress to integrate drones into the U.S. airspace by September 2015.

Capt. Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, brought a small quad-copter to a House aviation subcommittee hearing on Wednesday that he noted was capable of flying at 6,600 feet for 15 minutes.

“That means it could easily end up in the same airspace I occupy when I am on approach to land at Newark,Seattle, or any other airport,” he said, noting increased reports of drone sightings by pilots.

He urged the FAA not to allow pressure to rapidly integrate drones into the national airspace and compromise safety.

But others pressed for much more rapid FAA action. Rep. Roger Williams, a Texas Republican, said Amazon.com has had difficulty getting FAA permission for outdoor tests of package delivery in Washington state. Amazon told the FAA this week it has begun testing outside the United States because of the restrictions.

The FAA’s associate safety administrator, Peggy Gilligan, said the agency knows Amazon is unsatisfied and expects to “reach some conclusions shortly” on its application for an exemption.

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/12/10/u-s-approves-more-commercial-drone-use-as-congress-probes-risks/feed/0Manufacture And Testing Of Aerial Drones At SteadiDrone Ltd. HeadquartersvernekopyUpset with regulations, Amazon warns it could move drone tests abroadhttp://fortune.com/2014/12/08/upset-with-regulations-amazon-warns-it-could-move-drone-tests-abroad/
http://fortune.com/2014/12/08/upset-with-regulations-amazon-warns-it-could-move-drone-tests-abroad/#commentsTue, 09 Dec 2014 00:40:24 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=896330]]>(REUTERS) – Amazon.com Inc plans to shift more of its drone testing outside U.S. borders unless it gets quick permission from U.S. regulators to conduct outdoor trials, the company said in a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration late on Sunday.

The U.S. online retailer has already started conducting outdoor tests “in other countries with regulatory environments more supportive of small (unmanned aircraft systems) innovation,” according to the letter written by Amazon vice president of global public policy Paul Misener.

Amazon says outdoor testing is crucial to developing its “Prime Air” program, which aims to use drones – small unmanned aircraft – to deliver packages in 30 minutes or less. It said it preferred to keep that testing within theUnited States.

In July, Amazon sought permission from the FAA to test drones in outdoor areas near Seattle, where one of its research and development labs is working on the technology, but the FAA has been slow to give its approval.

“Without approval of our testing in the United States, we will be forced to continue expanding our Prime Air R&D footprint abroad,” Misener wrote in the letter, first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Drones are among several initiatives underway at Amazon to help control rising shipping costs and compete with brick-and-mortar stores by delivering items quickly. Amazon said there were dozens of U.S. job openings for its Prime Air division for hardware engineers and research scientists.

Last year, the U.S. government created six sites for companies, universities and others to test drones for broader commercial use. The area near Seattle where Amazon wants to conduct its tests is not among those sites, and Amazon said it would be impractical for “it to pursue the test sites as our sole method of testing at this time.”

If "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," then a drone by any other name would still be a remote-controlled flying vehicle. And yet there is quite the kerfuffle over how to refer to these aerial devices.

The debate over what to call these flying vehicles was brought to light in a Wall Street Journal article published today. The main argument against "drone" is that it makes people think only of the technology's militaristic uses, despite it having other applications.

Alternatives for the word drone mentioned by the Journal include "crone," "remotely piloted aircraft," and "unmanned aircraft." Some aerospaces companies name their drones based on however many propellers they have, so they'll name a "quadcopter" for a drone with four propellers and an "octocopter" for one with eight.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and tell us how you feel about the word "drone." If you are not a fan, what's the best alternative and why?

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/10/09/drone-industry-hates-word-drone/feed/0A pilot flies a Phantom drone by DJIhuddlestontomDespite FAA dithering, a drone economy sprouts on the farmhttp://fortune.com/2014/09/16/despite-faa-dithering-a-drone-economy-sprouts-on-the-farm/
http://fortune.com/2014/09/16/despite-faa-dithering-a-drone-economy-sprouts-on-the-farm/#commentsTue, 16 Sep 2014 22:31:37 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=771933]]>In June, the oil and gas giant BP BP began flying drones over an oil field in Prudhoe Bay, along the northern coastline of Alaska. It was the first commercial drone operation over land in the United States that was approved by the Federal Aviation Administration.

It’s a small step. There remains a long road toward integrating commercial unmanned aerial systems, known as UAS but more widely referred to as drones, with the U.S. national airspace. Progress has stalled for developing a new set of FAA regulations that would open up American skies to the devices. On June 26, an audit by the U.S. Department of Transportation found that the FAA will miss its September 2015 deadline to accomplish the task.

For most proponents of commercial drones, the waiting has become interminable. The BP exercise was by a single company over a small sliver of sky in a far northern hinterland--a painful reminder that progress is sluggish at best. UAS technologies will unleash $82 billion in economic impact and create more than 100,000 new jobs in the years immediately following the legalization of drones for commercial use, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, or AUVSI. Bureaucracy, drone supporters insist, is costing people money.

Down in the lower 48, the drone economy is developing more rapidly--albeit quietly, and in an altogether different industry than energy. Farmers and agronomists eager to make precision agriculture even more precise are developing and deploying a range of new UAS technologies--some off-the-shelf, some homegrown--to boost yields, battle common crop ailments, and drive overall farm efficiency. Growers and researchers are able to fly their drones without violating the FAA's near-outright ban on commercial drone use. In doing so, they are fast becoming the first in the U.S. to realize the economic potential of the drone economy yet to come.

Drones on the farm

Robert Blair, the proprietor of Three Canyon Farms in north-central Idaho, has owned and operated various small unmanned aircraft since 2006, when he first saw an ad for a farm-focused UAS in an agriculture magazine. To Blair, the benefits of capturing on-demand overhead imagery of his fields were immediately apparent. Even gathering only the most rudimentary data--such as photos--Blair can glean a good deal of information from a single pass over his fields and reduce the crop damage he might inflict using a more conventional method.

"I'd have to go out and scout my fields anyhow,” Blair says, “but this allows us to obtain information during periods when you would not be able to physically go into the fields--such as after a rainstorm when it's too muddy or when the crop is at a certain maturity when you would damage it by driving a four-wheeler out there. A UAV is easy to deploy and that info is back in your hands as soon as it lands."

The on-demand aspect of a drone is particularly useful. Satellite imagery that is days or weeks old isn't useful after a big storm or during a particularly dry spell. Hiring a conventional aircraft is expensive and often requires several days of lead time. "We just had a storm yesterday," Blair says. "And I want information today."

Several research institutions are hacking together new kinds of UAS from a range of off-the-shelf aircraft components and sensors in an attempt to beam new kinds of on-demand information from field to farmer. Researchers are custom-building drones that can deliver new kinds of data to growers, which they can then use to identify a range of agricultural problems.

Dennis Bowman, an agronomist with the University of Illinois Extension, has experimented with both the camera-equipped Parrot AR Drone (a recreational model available online for less than $200) and a Phantom quad-rotor (a slightly more sophisticated recreational drone manufactured by Hong Kong-based DJI). He has since constructed his own hexacopter drone from parts available online, equipping his creation with a custom-modified Canon Powershot camera that shoots imagery using infrared (IR) light. "For some of those things that would seem very daunting, I've found YouTube videos for every step of the process," he says. "It's kind of amazing."

For decades, the term "precision agriculture" was used for agricultural practices that used GPS and other geospatial technologies to observe and manage variability in crops. Drones offer a more acute way to do that--and combined with data analytics technologies, could actually diagnose problems and recommend crop management strategies that farmers can consult.

For example, the Utah Water Research Lab at Utah State University recently struck a deal with a major California grape-growing operation to use drones to collect data on how much water the company is losing through evaporation versus plant transpiration. The information is consequential as water scarcity becomes an increasingly pressing issue along parts of the West Coast. Thanks to tools developed by the Utah Water Research Lab team, it’s not all the collaboration will produce.

"What we want to be able to do is to fly one day and within 24 hours deliver to the manager of the farm a daily schedule for the next seven days recommending how much water he needs to put down each individual drip lateral," says Mac McKee, director of the Utah Water Research Lab. "We could tell them how much water to give to each individual grape vine, but they can't respond at that level of detail. Right now they can't even respond at the drip lateral because they lack the information to differentiate from one to another. We'll be able to give them that detailed information.

“At the same time we'll be able to tell them how much nitrogen fertilizer should be contained in that irrigation water. We'll be able to give them a schedule for when we think they need to trim the grape leaves out of the vine canopy to provide optimum sunshine. And a whole series of other things."

In other words, drones will soon be feeding growers more high-resolution data than they'll know what to do with. It’s not some distant future: Pending FAA approval, the Utah State team will commence the California flights before the end of the year.

Harvesting data

In countries like Japan and Canada where governments have been more proactive in embracing drone technologies, UAS have been flying over farms for years. But those technologies aren't quite geared for the kind of large-format farming conducted in the American Midwest: The average Japanese rice paddy, it’s safe to say, is quite a bit smaller than the average Midwestern cornfield.

"What we don't have right now is the right products in the United States," says Darryl Jenkins, a longtime aerospace industry consultant and analyst and co-author of the AUVSI report on the potential economic impacts of commercial drone integration in the U.S.

Analytics in particular are lacking. Today, imagery collected in non-visible spectrums like infrared can detect variations in plant stress across a given field, but tools to diagnose exactly what the data mean (let alone produce meaningful recommendations for growers) are not widely available. Farmers can see that crops in one corner of a field are under a different amount of, or different kind of, stress than plants in another area. Soon, thanks to research efforts like those conducted by McKee and Bowman and their academic peers, databases will exist that can tell farmers what is causing a certain kind of plant stress and recommend a fix--all without having a professional agronomist on hand to translate the data.

"It's really hard, technically, to translate multispectral imagery into products that can be useful for supporting decisions that farmers and growers need to make," McKee says. "Only in the past few years have we been able to bring the analytics far enough along to make a dent."

The challenge has created something of an expectations gap for some farmers who want to use drones made or sold by 3D Robotics, Honeycomb, Precision Drone, and others to improve their resource efficiency and crop yields. Online message boards on forums like DIY Drones are rife with questions, answers, advice, and shop talk surrounding the use of drones in agriculture.

"When you start needing to make agronomic decision on the crops themselves, you can't get that just visually, it takes a bit more sophistication," says Mark Blanks, the UAS Program Manager at the Applied Aviation Research Center at Kansas State University. "People are buying stuff that they think is going to basically cook their dinner, and then they're finding that the data isn't as good as they thought it would be."

The misperception suggests future opportunity. The Utah State Water Research Lab team led by McKee plans to spin out a business within the next 12 months offering drone hardware and software solutions to precision agriculturists. Fixtures of the drone hardware world such as DJI and 3D Robotics are poised to sell a many more aircraft systems if they can provide the solutions that farmers need. And software analytics, whether sold to farmers individually or provided as a service, are expected to become major agricultural service--just as soon as the FAA develops a set of rules that allows companies to sell drone-related services commercially. The transformation of both domestic agriculture and the U.S. small drone industry is already underway.

"We see it in the community," he says. "There are a whole lot of startup companies that are going out and selling services or hardware to farmers. And some early adopters are moving into it. But I don't think the return on investment has proven itself yet. We need to prove the return on investment on the data, and that's coming soon."

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/09/16/despite-faa-dithering-a-drone-economy-sprouts-on-the-farm/feed/0Farming alfalfa harvestsoccerrogueFor one student, dreams of drone-based advertising take flighthttp://fortune.com/2014/08/27/raj-singh-dronecast-drone-advertiser/
http://fortune.com/2014/08/27/raj-singh-dronecast-drone-advertiser/#commentsWed, 27 Aug 2014 19:54:15 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=771936]]>Raj Singh's moment of revelation came in November of last year, when Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos hawked a line of package-delivering drones to Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes. Nine months later, the 19-year-old college freshman is the founder of DroneCast, the only U.S. company, he claims, that does drone-based advertising.

"Right when it was going on, I was like, that's genius," says Singh, whose first name is actually GauravJit, although he goes by Raj. "People have been using drones for photography for a few years now. Then it hit me. What happened with the Internet? People put ads everywhere. I wanted to do the same thing with drones."

Think of the prop planes that fly parallel to beaches with big banners billowing behind them announcing deals on salt-water taffy. Now take that banner, stack the letters on top of one other until they spell out a word, and fasten it to the underbelly of a quadcopter. For this, Singh turned his back on studying biomedical engineering at Drexel University. He says investors have already committed $1 million to his Philadelphia-based startup, which aims to take a piece of a $7 billion “out of home” advertising market that includes conventional billboards, transit ads, and so-called street furniture, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.

"There is no one else doing this," Singh says. DroneCast filed for a provisional patent for this sort of drone-mounted display advertising in January.

Assembling a fleet of drones is not cheap, as Singh has discovered. When he dropped out of Drexel in January--albeit temporarily; he returns this December to study entrepreneurship--he borrowed $15,000 from his father to fund a series of tests. He needed to figure out what types of motors would keep a drone-copter airborne while it was saddled with the weight of a hanging banner advertisement. Singh completed a successful test flight with a prototype drone at the end of April. Since then, he has amassed an aerial advertising squad of six drones. Each of the drones cost between $10,000 and $15,000; Singh's modifications, which include off-the-shelf features like foldable or automatic landing gear and bigger motors, push the prices up further. The most expensive drone in DroneCast's fleet is a DJI S1000 Octocopter that costs $25,000.

At the BeachGlow Music Festival in Wildwood, N.J. over the Independence Day weekend, all Singh's drones were on display, though not all of them were airborne. The smaller DJI Phantom 2 quadcopters, each of which weighs about three pounds, dropped glowsticks from about six feet above the heads of festival-goers, while the 8-lb. S1000 hoisted a 3-foot-wide by 10-foot-tall banner 22 feet into the air.

Of course, the publicity from Singh's project, some of which is self-induced--he recently completed a national promotional tour for DroneCast in July that hit Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Miami--has attracted more than just the consideration of deep-pocketed investors.

"It has gotten us a little bit of attention from the FAA as well," Singh says.

Since 2007 the Federal Aviation Administration has held that using drones for any type of commercial activity is illegal, often citing safety as its main concern. Seven years later, that prohibition seems rather quaint. It was issued at a time when the word “drone” evoked images of large, military-style machines that fire missiles while flying over foreign countries. The FAA, anticipating the use of such high-altitude drones for law enforcement and border control, never predicted the miniaturization and sophistication of technology to the point where tiny cameras and smaller drones flown at much lower altitudes might become more mainstream. Today, the people that the agency classifies as hobbyists who take photos with small drones--what the agency sometimes calls "model aircraft"--for their own personal use are free to do so. But taking photographs by drone with the intention to sell them to others? Can't do that, according to the FAA.

"The agency has not been able to come up with guidelines that really effectively address the appropriate use of those kinds of drones," says New York lawyer and head of Unmanned Aircraft Systems law group Brendan Schulman. "In the interim, they've basically attempted to restrict or stop people from doing just about anything using this technology."

It was Schulman who represented 29-year-old Raphael Pirker, fined $10,000 by the FAA after using a drone to film at the University of Virginia. A federal judge dismissed the fine in March, ruling that the FAA's 2007 policy ban was unenforceable because the agency hadn't sought the required public feedback on its rules governing the commercial use of drones before issuing them.

The FAA, however, appealed the dismissal, and continues to maintain that operating drones in a money-making endeavor is illegal, even if the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals recently ruled that the FAA's informal e-mails and letters ordering drone users to cease operations are invalid. In a document the FAA released at the end of June calling for public comment on its drone policy, the agency outlined specific uses of drones it considers unlawful. Among them: realtors using drones to photograph properties they're selling, commercial farmers using drones to determine if crops need watering, and using drones to deliver a package for a fee--an implicit interdiction against Amazon's right to deliver products by octocopter. Just this month, three separate lawsuits against the FAA were filed by groups challenging the interpretations of lawful and unlawful drone use the agency put forward in June.

As far as DroneCast is concerned: Singh says that if the FAA releases a set of drone rules that circumscribe commercial activities in the name of safety, he's ready to fall in line. "Safety is our first priority," he says.

But Singh appears unworried--and undeterred. His company's three lawyers have told him the same thing: because a federal judge said the FAA could not fine Pirker for taking photos and film by drone, advertising by drone should be legal, too.

"We're not looking to go up against the FAA," he says. "We're just trying to change the face of advertising."

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/08/27/raj-singh-dronecast-drone-advertiser/feed/0A DJI S1000 octocopter carrying a vertical banner during a DroneCast promotional flight in Philadelphia.soccerrogueFor today’s drone pilots, the sky—and the law—is the limithttp://fortune.com/2014/08/21/preparing-drone-pilot-jobs-ban-faa/
http://fortune.com/2014/08/21/preparing-drone-pilot-jobs-ban-faa/#commentsThu, 21 Aug 2014 16:26:04 +0000http://beta.fortune.com/?p=547960]]>Kevin Lupex and his friend Greg LeCompte stand in a small soccer field, awash in the sea-salt air and unyielding sun of St. Petersburg, Florida. A large, complicated remote control is slung around Lupex's neck. At his feet is a helicopter the size of a small dog, with four horizontal propeller blades--the sort often referred to as a quadcopter, or a drone.

In cargo shorts and t-shirts with ironic messages on them, Lupex and LeCompte, both 25, look like two laid-back college buddies playing with a fancy toy. But when they started building and flying drones about four months ago, they did it for their careers as much as for fun. Lupex is happy enough with his current work as a server at a beachside Italian restaurant, but he sees explosive potential in his little plastic flyer.

"Just being on the pioneering front of this could land you a job," Lupex says, before rattling off potential uses for drones, from Hollywood films to sporting events to dangerous inspection work. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International cosigns his enthusiasm, estimating that unmanned aircraft will generate 100,000 jobs and $82 billion in U.S. economic impact by 2025.

There’s one tiny problem: commercial drone activity is still illegal in the U.S. Current laws require drones to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, that each flight be FAA approved, and that each pilot have a traditional private pilots' license, which requires hundreds of hours in the cockpit of a real airplane. To date, just one unmanned drone operation, run in Alaska by ConocoPhillips COP, has ever met those criteria.

The FAA will propose new rules by the end of this year, but statements from Jim Williams, manager of the FAA's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Office, indicate that approval could take up to three more years. There's also no promise that the new rules would be looser than current ones, though the FAA does say they may offer limited exemptions to existing rules soon.

Preparing for that day, Lupex and LeCompte are learning drone technology and operations inside and out while operating as hobbyists. They built their machines from parts, and Lupex's ‘copter has the patched-together look of an ambitious high school science project, covered in exposed wire and control boxes, and held together in some places with zip ties.

Watching the thing in flight conjures up a unique, slightly unnerving variety of the wonder humankind has always found in flight. Its high power to weight ratio makes a quadcopter stunningly maneuverable, tracing tight turns and easily holding fixed positions, whether a hundred feet up or four feet off the ground. Even in 15 to 20 mile per hour winds, the drone is uncannily steady, its GPS and flight control systems compensating for every gust.

Lupex sends the drone zooming straight up, to what might be a little above the 400 foot ceiling for recreational unmanned aircraft. "Nobody really enforces that much," he notes, laughing. The machine looks like it could easily go higher.

Lupex estimates that he's spent about $800 on his quadcopter so far, and he plans to spend more on upgrades such as a First Person Video rig that would allow piloting the machine through an Oculus Rift-style headset. His 'copter has about 15 pounds of thrust, he says, and weighs only 4 pounds, meaning that it could in theory serve as part of the drone delivery network being planned by Amazon AMZN. Lupex thinks that's a long way off, though, due to technology if nothing else. "I only get 12 minutes of flight on this battery,” he says. “I don't know how that would work."

That $800 includes quite a few replacements for parts broken in crashes, such as when a miscalibrated GPS connection sent Lupex's quadcopter zooming out of control over St. Petersburg's Venice-like canal neighborhoods. He frantically tracked it, following a trail of curious onlookers. "They're like, 'Did you see that thing? What was it?', and I'm like, 'Which way did it go?"

Finally, Lupex found that his 'copter had crashed into the roof of a house, then fallen to the ground. Its rotors kept spinning full force until the home's owner poked it into submission with a broomstick, breaking all four rotors. Lupex was grateful the episode didn't end with his investment in a canal, or worse.

"Anything falling out of the sky that's five pounds will probably kill you," he points out.

Ground crashes are just one reason for heightened regulatory caution, even if a rulemaking process that might stretch into 2018 seems out of sync with widespread reports of drones already being put to commercial use against regulations.

"We are trying to draft regulations that will ensure the safety of the busiest, most complex airspace in the world," says FAA spokesperson Les Dorr. That includes the very likely scenario of drones sharing at least some airspace with conventional aircraft, which, if mismanaged, could easily lead to major accidents.

In the meantime, the FAA is studying the possibility of some exemptions for applications posing no threat to anyone on the ground or air. Dorr offered a closed movie set as one possible candidate for this exemption process.

Back at the soccer field in St. Pete, something has gone terribly wrong. About a hundred feet in the air, there's a tiny metallic sound, and Kevin Lupex's quadcopter does a tight aerobatic flip. Then it goes into an automatic landing sequence, bouncing to a stop on the grass just short of a sidewalk. Lupex and LeCompte examine the 'copter, finding that an antenna somehow struck a rotor, ripping off the antenna, overheating a motor, and cracking a strut.

"Looks like we won't be flying any more today," Lupex says with a smirk.

He shrugs. "That's just the reality of it. There are a lot of accidents."

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/08/21/preparing-drone-pilot-jobs-ban-faa/feed/0Amateur drone operatorssoccerrogueAmazon asks FAA for go-ahead to test its delivery droneshttp://fortune.com/2014/07/10/amazon-faa-letter-drone-test/
http://fortune.com/2014/07/10/amazon-faa-letter-drone-test/#commentsThu, 10 Jul 2014 23:03:37 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=743298]]>Amazon is asking regulators to allow the company to test its delivery drones a little bit closer to home.

The online retail giant sent a letter Wednesday asking the Federal Aviation Administration to ease its restrictions on drone-testing in the U.S. in order to allow Amazon to experiment with its unmanned aircraft outdoors near the company’s Seattle headquarters instead of one of the six FAA-approved sites elsewhere in the country.

Amazon’s developmental efforts are part of its plan to one day launch a drone delivery program, called Amazon Prime Air, to carry packages as heavy as five pounds to customers’ homes with drones that can fly as fast as 50 miles per hour. The company’s announcement of the idea gained quite a bit of attention last year, despite an uncertain timeframe for implementation.

The FAA has maintained that unmanned aerial vehicles are only to be used for recreational purposes, and not for commercial reasons, until it is able to come up with rules by which it can regulate the industry. The agency also said last year that it will sanction six outdoor drone-testing sites in the U.S., located in Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia.

But, Amazon AMZN wants to move its testing out of its indoor facilities in order to accelerate the development of its aerial fleet and the company is trying to sell the FAA on the idea that its research would ultimately benefit consumers by offering “enormous consumer benefits by delivering packages to customers in 30 minutes or less.”

“One day, seeing Amazon Prime Air will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today, resulting in enormous benefits for consumers across the nation,” the company says in its letter. “We respectfully submit this petition for exemption so that Prime Air can be ready to launch commercial operations as soon as eventually permitted by subsequent FAA action.”

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/07/10/amazon-faa-letter-drone-test/feed/0Image (1) 131202125905-amazon-drone-620xa2.jpg for post 342893huddlestontomSun Valley mogul gathering on alert for snooping droneshttp://fortune.com/2014/07/09/sun-valley-drones-fear/
http://fortune.com/2014/07/09/sun-valley-drones-fear/#commentsWed, 09 Jul 2014 17:40:29 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=741774]]>Sun Valley security officers will be watching the skies this year as they look to keep attendees safe from a new threat: drones.

Technology and media moguls have unpacked their bags at the Idaho resort and are ready for the 31st annual Allen & Co. conference, the source of some of the most famous (and infamous) media and tech deals in recent years.

Security guards patrol the Sun Valley grounds and are charged with keeping the big-name attendees safe from intruders. No press or uninvited outsiders are allowed past the exclusive velvet ropes. Any information or photographs of attendees that leak past the phalanx of guards are precious commodities for news agencies around the world.

As drone technology becomes cheaper and more advanced -- thanks in part to investments by some of the Sun Valley attendees’ companies -- security guards are remaining vigilant to the new safety and privacy threat, Bloomberg News reports.

Last year, media outlets hailed the appearance of “paparazzi drones” after a photographer in South Africa launched a small drone near the hospital where Nelson Mandela was seeking care. Official’s detained the photographer and confiscated the small aircraft because of security regulations.

A DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ Quadcopter, which sports an high-definition video camera and 25 minutes of flight time, retails on Amazon.com for $1,300. That price point puts the burgeoning technology in the hands of everyday users or media outlets big and small.

Users should be aware, however, that the commercial use of drones is banned in U.S. airspace, according to regulations by the Federal Aviation Administration, although some exceptions exist for licensed pilots.

That could change pending the administration’s first drone-focused rules that are expected to come out this year. They would relax restrictions on drones that weigh less than 55 pounds, which could mean Sun Valley’s guards have an even tougher task ahead of them next year.

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/07/09/sun-valley-drones-fear/feed/0Manufacture And Testing Of Aerial Drones At SteadiDrone Ltd. HeadquarterslorenzettifortuneUncle Sam: Jacking up your airfarehttp://fortune.com/2011/02/21/uncle-sam-jacking-up-your-airfare/
http://fortune.com/2011/02/21/uncle-sam-jacking-up-your-airfare/#commentsMon, 21 Feb 2011 15:00:56 +0000http://test-alley.fortune.com/2011/02/21/uncle-sam-jacking-up-your-airfare/]]>It’s hard to defend all the fees that airlines charge, but it sure is easy to get mad at all the taxes the government tacks on.

Which item do you think has the most federal taxes and fees attached to it: (1) a can of Budweiser, (2) a carton of Marlboro Reds, (3) a Smith & Wesson Centennial revolver, or (4) a roundtrip airline ticket from Chicago to St. Louis?

If you guessed the beer, cigarettes, or gun, you’d be wrong. Federal taxes and fees tally up to about 5% for the beer, 18.2% for the cigarettes, and 10% for the revolver. But buying an airline ticket pushes the boundaries of government taxation, initiating a slew of taxes and fees most of us never knew existed — a passenger ticket tax, a flight segment tax, a frequent-flier tax, a cargo waybill tax, a commercial jet fuel tax, and a 9/11 fee, just to name a few. I recently found a reasonably priced fare of just $151 for that roundtrip ticket to St. Louis. But tack on the fees and taxes and the total price came to $185.80, a markup of more than 20%.

Now, I’m generally not one to defend the airlines, and I can rattle off a long list of things I hate about air travel, from endless lines at security to tightly crowded seats to the stale-smelling air on most planes. And the airlines haven’t won any sympathy from me with their latest round of nickel-and-diming, charging extra for everything from checking a bag to changing a ticket to the right to stretch out in an exit-row seat. But airline travel is what I consider a necessary evil, both for business and for leisure.

More important, the airline industry is an extremely critical part of our national infrastructure and our economic growth. And to be carrying such an unfairly disproportionate burden of fees and taxes seems, at best, short-sighted from a national policy perspective.

Tell that to any airline executive and you’ll get the same reaction: “We’ve been complaining about that for years — where have you been?” That’s what I heard from Gordon Bethune, the man who led Continental Airlines UAL from a company that was losing millions and facing bankruptcy to one that regularly reported a profit and improved customer loyalty to boot.

He says that the airlines are an easy target for the government, and that it’s a big reason airlines have had so much trouble earning healthy profits. “The government doesn’t think anything of adding fees and thinking it doesn’t matter,” Bethune tells me. “Well, it does. There’s an elasticity of price for airline tickets, and every extra dollar they take is one we lose.”

But the bigger problem with all of these taxes is that they’re not being used for what they should be: rebuilding and shoring up our air traffic control system, which is woefully out of date. The current system has been around since the 1960s. “Your car has more navigation technology in it than most airplanes,” says Richard Anderson, the CEO of Delta Air Lines DAL and the new chairman of the Air Transport Association. “Everybody’s car has a GPS system, but most airlines still use altimeters and compasses.” (Lawmakers in Washington are mulling a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration that would include funding for modernization, but final passage has been plagued by, well, delays. At least the airlines know how we feel.)

It isn’t just plane technology that’s out of date. The airlines use prescribed pathways in the sky to get from one city to the next — the airway from Atlanta to New York is the same today as it was 40 years ago. But obviously there are many more planes in the air today than there were 40 years ago. And that means planes have to wait to get their spot on the grid. Think of it as driving on a metropolitan highway that hasn’t been expanded in decades, and you begin to get the picture. The airlines say a new, satellite-based system would make everything more efficient. Travel time on a trip from Chicago to New York, for instance, could be cut by about 25 to 30 minutes.

For frequent fliers, that’s even better than bonus miles. And maybe even something that would justify all of those taxes and fees.